Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will receive today the signature of the contract that allocates 318.5 million reais (about 62 million dollars) from the Amazon Fund for the so-called Amazonia: Security and Sovereignty Plan (AMAS).
The signing of the agreement between the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Ricardo Lewandowski, and the head of the National Bank for Economic and Social Development, Aloizio Mercadante, will take place at the Planalto Palace, the seat of the Executive Power in the capital.
In addition to investing in federal and local security professionals, intelligence and inspection activities will be reinforced through the acquisition and leasing of equipment to fight organised crime, such as medium-sized helicopters, armoured boats and vehicles.
One of the main objectives of AMAS is to structure and equip the International Police Cooperation Centre in Manaus, capital of the northern state of Amazonas, and to reinforce integration with the Environmental Operations Company, a unit of the National Force specialised in combating deforestation.
The idea is to expand and facilitate the exchange of information between federal security forces, representatives of the public security secretariats of the nine states of the Legal Amazon and representatives of the other countries that make up the biome.
Environmental organisations warn that the expansion of criminal factions increases indicators of violence in the region and aggravates criminal actions linked to the environmental devastation of the Amazon, such as deforestation, mining, land grabbing and fires.
The presentation of the document entitled Cartographies of Violence in the Amazon, presented in November by the Brazilian Forum for Public Security and the Madre Criolla Institute, warned that factions have gained ground in the region, not only by expanding drug trafficking, but also by associating them with environmental crimes that devastate the lungs of the planet.
According to the report, at least 22 national and foreign criminal factions operate in the Legal Amazon, an area that corresponds to 59 percent of the national territory and encompasses nine states: Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, Tocantins and Maranhão. The study mapped and located their presence in 178 of the region’s 772 cities (25 per cent), one in every four municipalities. In 80 of them, there are gang disputes.
A third of Amazonians live in areas of conflict and clashes between criminal groups. At least 8.3 million people are subjected to the dynamics of extreme violence in their daily routines, such as exchanges of gunfire and daylight killings.
Fifty-nine percent of the area’s population, or 15.4 million people, reside under the domination of at least one of these factions.
